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I May Never Find a Full-Time Job Again

Striving and surviving in my 50s in a very crowded profession

Mike Scarpiello
Crow’s Feet: Life As We Age
5 min readAug 22, 2024

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Photo by Matt Noble on Unsplash

For only the third time in the last 20 years, I find myself unemployed at the age of 58. I was laid off on June 4th from a large e-commerce retailer while I was on vacation. While I was on vacation! My boss sent me a Microsoft Teams message at 9:30 am on a Wednesday to see if I could meet with her for a quick “touch base” at 10 am. As soon as I logged into the meeting and saw the split screen with my boss and an HR rep, I knew it was over. She simply read from a script, told me I’d get one month’s severance, and asked if I had any questions. I was too stunned to say anything, and I said “No” and hung up.

One month earlier, I had just gotten a stellar review, a raise, and a bonus. When talking to my fellow laid-off coworkers, I learned it had nothing to do with our performance, and everything to do with the company’s bottom line. The company had experienced a bad first fiscal quarter, and management wanted to implement cost savings. And just like that, half of the design department was gone.

My career up until now

I changed careers in 2004 after getting my Master’s Degree in Human-Computer Interaction. This is more commonly known as User Experience Design these days. The exact career I…

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Crow’s Feet: Life As We Age
Crow’s Feet: Life As We Age

Published in Crow’s Feet: Life As We Age

“The longer I live, the more beautiful life becomes.” (Frank Lloyd Wright) Non-fiction pieces, personal essays and occasional poems that explore how we feel about how we age and offer tips for getting the most out of life.

Mike Scarpiello
Mike Scarpiello

Written by Mike Scarpiello

UX Designer, writer, musician, poet, political satirist, musician, bull runner, craft beer enthusiast, and UX Design mentor at https://shorturl.at/jRV2i

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